GARDEN FESTIVAL SOWED SEED FOR FUTURE
ON THE old site of the Garden Festival of Wales sits an outlet shopping centre. In many ways, it is like any other of its kind. Poundland sits in the heart of the slightly dated Ebbw Vale precinct, surrounded by shops you could see anywhere else – a Marks and Spencer outlet, Sports Direct, Claire’s Accessories and Clarks.
Some shop fronts are empty, while in one corner a group of pensioners sits and gossips at a cafe.
While there are some throwbacks to the festival site that was there 26 years ago – at every turn there are hanging baskets blooming with flowers – you could quite easily forget the significance it once held.
This is the story of one valley which faced a Goliath challenge.
In the 1980s, Blaenau Gwent had slipped under the radar.
It had been an area defined by its industry and, after significant closures, by the deprivation which inevitably followed mass unemployment.
What it needed was rejuvenation. But bids for big projects in the past had been lost.
“There were diagrams about the deprivation in the area that would make your hair stand up,” said Brian Scully, leader of Blaenau Gwent Borough Council at the time.
“The reasons were all around us, the works were closing, thousands of jobs were going.
“The only thing we had left of the steel industry was the tin plant, the other half was a derelict steel works.
“There were slag heaps. It was an eyesore.”
The steel works closure took place over a number of years. In 1947 the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron and Coal company was taken over by the National Coal Board when the industry was nationalised.
In that year three mines were still in production – Waunlwyd, Cwmcarn and Marine. They were closed in 1964, 1968 and 1988 respectively.
To tackle similar concerns across the UK, the 1980s also saw the Government announce the creation of the National Garden Festivals scheme.
The idea, based on a German concept after the war, was to give former industrial sites a new lease of life by investing between £25m and £70m on each area.
The festivals, one to be held every two months in a different city, would show off the area for six glorious months, bring in millions of tourists and transform the area. However, there was one problem. “They had announced nationally that there were to be three garden festivals,” Mr Scully said.
“The first was Liverpool, the second was Stoke, and the third, most impor- tantly, was in Scotland.
“I took against that very strongly in the sense that Wales, and certainly in an area like mine and other parts of Wales, had a serious economic regeneration deficit.”
Unable to let the opportunity pass him by, the leader of the small council of Blaenau Gwent took his fight to the Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Crickhowell.
He said: “As I was the leader of my own local authority and I was very much involved in the Local Government Association, I took those positions to highlight the issue and embarrass Lord Crickhowell. “I put constant pressure on him. “It went on for a considerable time, some months, and then I had the phone call from the permanent secretary of state saying that the papers had been drawn up and two supplementary sites would be drawn up – with one site in Gateshead and one in Wales.”
With news the Garden Festival was to come to Wales, the borough of Blaenau Gwent faced one of its biggest challenges to date – to outshine all of its competitors.
Of all the local authorities, 19 entered a bid, including rivals Swansea and Cardiff.
To the people of Ebbw Vale and its surrounding towns, it became clear they would have to be different.
“I had this gut feeling that if we were to win it had to be non-political,” said Mr Scully, of Ebbw Vale.
“At this time I gave up the leadership and took up something else – putting on the pie and chips. We got all the rugby clubs in, all the football clubs, we went to all the primary schools, comprehensives and all.
“We were there seven days a week for weeks in the evenings and in the day we were out with the children.”
Within months a committee was formed – not including politicians but instead cultural and horticultural experts from across Gwent.
From there came the council leader’s biggest brainwave. The team would create a video showing Blaenau Gwent, the trouble it was in, and the importance of the festival.
It was a controversial idea but, after a heated meeting, the concept was approved – and took shape with the help of Brian Blake, managing director of Welsh Brewers.
Finally, when a festival official arrived to assess the borough, the grandfather of 11 and great-grandfather of four took the officials in a 4x4 along a bumpy mountain road.
They looked down to the valley below. He said: “I’ll always remember it. We were sitting on a wimberry bush and I was holding down the paper plans against the wind to show them what it would look like 1,000 feet below. Swansea was competing and I knew they were the most important competition because I had lost a bid for the enterprise zone.
“Cardiff withdrew its application, as plans for the Bay were being drawn up at the time. We had Newport supporting us and we knew we were in with a fighting chance.”
On November 19, 1986, it was announced that Ebbw Vale had won the bid for the last British Garden Festival. Work started in earnest.
Initially the project started with a modest budget of £8m to develop the land. This then stretched to £18m.
Slag heaps had to be removed and five years of hard work started to transform the area.
In total 1,000 homes were built,